Gittel, the Would-Be Messiah, Poems by Naomi Feigelson Chase

Naomi Feigelson Chase’s Gittel, the Would-Be Messiah is a comic and biting novel in verse that gives us the life story of Gittel, a woman chosen by God to assume the mantle of the Messiah. Blending the concision of verse with the fast pace and plot turns of the best prose fiction, Gittel is a memorable book in any genre.

Sample Poems by Naomi Feigelson Chase

“In Gittel, the Would-Be Messiah, Naomi Chase gives us Gittel, a character so lively, so rambunctious, so splendid in her reasoning, this provocative novel in verse reads as a mock-biography. Chase’s on-target wit and verbal agility do more than challenge religious iconography. These poems transform tender and vulnerable human emotions and lift them into the political. A completely engaging book which spins in the whirlwind of the feminine psyche.”—Denise Duhamel

Naomi Feigelson Chase, won the 2003 Flume Press Poetry Chapbook Award for One Blue Thread. She has published two other poetry books, Listening for Water, Archival Press, and Waiting for the Messiah in Somerville, Mass., Garden Street Press ; & two other poetry chapbooks, The Judge’s Daughter, and Stacked (illust., Jon Agee). Her nonfiction books include A Child Is Being Beaten: Child Abuse in Amercia,  Holt, Rinehart & Winston, and The Underground Revolution, Hippies, Yippies and Others,  Funk and Wagnalls. Her fiction has been published in many magazines, and anthologized by Milkweed Editions and New Rivers Press.

ISBN 1932339795, 100 pages

Order from Barnes and Noble

Order from Powells

Order from Amazon